The vast majority of humanity ignores the big picture and just tries to survive their daily life.
Presumably a hatred of genocide and imperialism is born from a love for most of humanity?
This is a broad question, but here is my experience with someone on the other end of the political spectrum. We were coworkers for a few weeks. I found out that they aligned themselved with the alt right party in my country, and it bothered me a lot. But with help I also realized that they weren’t dangerous and mostly frustrated by german politics - fair! - and willfully uninformed.
On the last day we worked together I mentioned that I was really nervous/upset about an appointment I had in the afternoon, and they were caring. As I left work they wished me the best for the appointment. This is the last impression I had of them and I found that really sweet. People are more than their political beliefs. We may not subscribe to everything they think is right, but I find that as long as it actively doesn’t harm us to be kind, we should be. Avoiding someone and being upset also takes energy.
And I believe the individual needs understanding and compassion when discussing politics. As long as the person isn’t a threat to others, and as long as you find their company neutral or even good, I think this is the way to go.
If they’re just ignoring and not actively defending, I’d think a little about all the horrors that you yourself ignore. We have a habit, as a society, of picking and choosing an ever rotating array of set of issues to demonstrate our moral rectitude. The natural world is built on predation and suffering, overpopulation and famine; and capitalism triply so. Truly accepting and acknowledging the daily constant terrors of this Earth is having tea with Cthulhu–it would drive anyone mad.
You can be friendly and not be a friend.
Would you be friendly with a Nazi?
Does he announce himself in a way that let’s me know he’s a Nazi? If yes then of course not, but imagine how many people you pass by a day and maybe smile at or say hello. There’s a non zero chance that you’ve been friendly with some genuinely awful person.
You’re just talking about basic politeness. I’m not talking about holding the door for someone…
Then op needs to explain themselves better.
Well, we can agree on that
Yes. You should be friendly to most and Realpolitik comes for us all. And you gotta keep on living. Cannot do that while simmering in rage.
Also your perspective may be warped considering the radical and extreme view points on here.
Also sometimes e.g. Ukraine is painted as a rogue state by Russians. People falling victim to propaganda usually aren’t convinced by being a passive aggressive knob head.
No. But it’s important to remember a person can be immature, ignorant, propagandised or straight up stupid so, if you have the patience for it, one should try to explain some basic truths of the world and wait for their reply before dismissing them entirely.
Yeah I think ignorance isn’t itself a crime, but willful ignorance, callous disregard, moral/ethical laziness, and similar drivers of complacency can be considered problems worth assigning some degree of responsibility. So the goal should be to isolate one of those root causes before going on the offense.
Should someone? You make it sound like that’s all they are and all you are. Presumably, your friendship isn’t built on geopolitics, and frankly about 80% of the country gives about 1% of a fuck what happens in the Middle East, and not even that much if it doesn’t affect oil prices. Those things gain far away and there’s a good chance your friend has many more immanent problems closer to home to worry about.
That being said, of course you can decide you can’t stand people who stand by and do nothing. It’s a genocide for fucks sake, and all that it’s necessary for evil to win is for good men to do nothing — so standing back and letting it happen is evil.
Reality generally lands between those two extremes. You have to decide for yourself whether your friendship is at stake over this.
It’s less about geopolitics and more about morals, and politics are extended ethics anyway. A simple collection of videos of Israeli settlers doing their thing should be enough for anyone with a heart to take the side of the victims. And, if the person is cautious and wary of AI and false narratives, then the phrase “if all of this is true, then yeah, this shit is horrible and they’re going to Hell for it” or something similar works as a reply too.
Having said that, if you live in the West and have access to the internet/went to school, I highly doubt you’ve never heard about Israel, or the American wars against Vietnam, Korea, West Asia, etc etc, or the Western extermination/subjugation of the natives in the Americas, India, Congo, Australia… At this point, unless you are truly mentally challenged or sheltered and uniformed to the point of barely knowing what happened last week in your neighborhood and no more than that, you should have an opinion on these things and I can judge your moral character based on those opinions alone (we’re talking mass murder, rape and theft here, not idk, smoking weed and torrenting videogames).
Ehh… you’d be surprised at how little US schools teach about the negative aspects of wars and conflicts the US is involved in…
Hell, for most, even Vietnam boils down to, “quagmire”. So little they don’t even begin to think of how fucked up it was for the US to get involved, let alone … everything else.
Not to defend ignorance. I fucking hate willfully ignorant people. I just mean to say many Americans aren’t willfully ignorant.
That’s fair. It’s hard to remember this but it’s always good to hear, it keeps the misanthropy at bay. 👍
I have family with no moral compass. This question keeps me up at night.
Just cut them off and get some sleep
no. it sucks finding out that people you’ve been friends with for a long time have these views, but indifference to crimes this abhorrent is effectively the same as supporting them.
